Adrenaline as a strength boost

Adrenaline or epinephrine is a hormone. Others imply adrenaline as a neurotransmitter. So why is adrenaline such an important thing for us and our strength. Many of us found yourself in various situations like competitions. For example doing push ups in front of a group of people or lady's (yup!). Do you noticed that you can do way more push ups in front of someone or a group then at home? Do you faced a angry dog and ran scared away? Did you noticed that you where able to top the world record for 100 metres?

Why?
Adrenaline usually gives you bursts of super human strength in situations in which we have to deal with danger, fear or stress. Some people experience high amounts of adrenaline rush before a match, a game, a interview in front of audience. Which isn't a good thing - why? Isn't an adrenaline rush better before a boxing match to knock out your opponents? Nope! Read on.

How does it work

Adrenaline has many functions in the body, regulating heart rate, blood vessel and air passage diameters, and metabolic shifts. The root of everything is the hypothalamus. That little buddy has a amazing job, he decides what to do in states of excitement, stress or fear. The hypothalamus is located just under the thalamus above the brain stem.

Now imagine a stressful situation: You walk in the office a few moments late and notice your boss and other employers in a meeting you did not realize had been scheduled for today. The main reason of this meeting was to choose and fire employees because of the global economy crisis. Guess what, one among the chosen ones are you! Your heart seems to stop, your mouth is dry, your knees feel weak and you momentarily consider punch everyone around. Your life is not really in danger, and running away will not solve your problem - so why should you feel a physical urge to escape?
This is called "Fight or Flight" response. More on this later.

When we are confronted with a stressful situation e.g. we enter a dead end and behind us are masked persons with knifes (damn...) the body undergoes an amazing change. The hypothalamus send signals to the adrenal glands, firing up the symphatetic system which sends the body into an excited state. After the order to launch adrenaline and noradrenaline via rockets trough our body we gain enormous power. Those hormones work together increasing respiration, increasing heart rate, dilate the pupils, slow down or temporary stops digestion and allow muscles to contract which end up with an increased strength.

Doubling the strength

All of these changes prepare our body to confront with danger head-on. So how the hormones combined together increase strength. The adrenal medulla - an interior region of the adrenal glands releases the adrenaline which allows your body to transcend blood transfer speed, resulting in a better blood flow to our muscles. The blood can care more oxygen to our muscles that can operate on elevated levels. They shorten and tighten just like when we lift objects, push things away and train. Same happens with muscles that are attached to bones, called Skeletal muscles - those who are connected with bones over tendons. The difference is that Skeletal muscles are activated over electrical impulses.

Adrenaline also facilitates the conversion of the body's fuel source - glycogen into its fuel - glucose. This carbohydrate gives more then enough energy to muscles, and a sudden burst of glucose also allows muscles to strengthen further and above all possibilities.

Some theorize that people use only a minimal amount of the muscle capabilities. Some theories claim that during the fight or flight response the muscle could leverage up to the full potential. Other theories claim that they go far above their voluntary limitations.

Adrenaline pumped superhuman

wouldn't survive 30 minutes in this state. But why don't we possess superhuman strength all the time? Wouldn't it be demulcent?

The state of higher awareness and excitement doesn't do any good if prolonged. Turning potential muscle strength into actual strength requires a lot of training. The fight or flight response can lead to injuries, it can happen that joints can be pulled out of their sockets. The adrenaline rush has usually 3 phases.

• alarm reaction phase
• resistance phase 
• state of exhaustion

The first stage appears in a stress situation. The hypothalamus send out signals, that's when the stressors kick in. During the resistance phase the blood flow and muscle contraction is in it's full swing. The exhaustion phase occur when the duration response took too long and that's the phase when your immune system begin to tear down. There is a increased chance of illness, heart attacks and random pain syndromes caused from any physical activities you may do. As you can see it's better to stay calm. This is a article how to increase strength using a state of excitement.

Avoid stress situations in your life, job, kids try to take it easy. Life is short you know.

What is strength

So, there are hundreds of definitions that define strength. So what the heck is strength?
First of all, strength is a good thing, isn't it? That's the most important part. You need strength to walk, run, play sports, jump, move objects, breathe...

Yes even breathing is a thing that has to be done with muscles. Our lungs are big muscles, they work 24/7/365, imagine that. No pension, vacation or breaks, I would have resigned. So we could say that strength is the ability to create muscular tension. That's one definition of strength. We can consider strength as a ability to create useful real world movements in a period of time. So, we could easily say that those movements based on the work of muscles are some kind of impressive display of strength. Many strength coaches will provide similarly muddy definitions, usually implicitly that doesn't make sense at all.

So could we say that a person is strong if he produces enormous muscular tension but his body still remains still and doesn't move? In practical sense not or maybe yes? Most of us (younger generations) watched a anime called Dragon Balls. In this anime-movie the main characters produce huge amounts of energy focusing all strength in one point. The result of the enormous energy consumption procedure is a energy ball that has devastating power. I say in most cases, sometimes the energy focusing force releases all power consumed and result in demolition and destruction of everything living and unliving, even planets get incrusted.

Hey, hey... would you please stop talking about some anime cartoon, I want to get stronger?

Yes of course. I wanted to tell you that this is no nonsense. The old Japanese and Chinese people already knew about a force deep inside the human body. Not only the anime Dragon Ball which was produced in the early  1980's (with that thematic including energy balls and force) testify the knowledge and skills of the old Eastern culture. Every other cartoon of this type is a cheap copy of this one. I took the most trivial example which that flew trough my head. You already know and heard about the ancient East. There are tons of books and docu's that testify about their Chi power. I will talk later one more about this.

There is a adage that says: "Strength does not come from physical capacity it comes from indomitable will"
Mahatma Gandhi.

So if strength has to do with muscular tension how could a female lift a truck to save her child? OK now I turned from the road. I will write about this later, you can read about adrenaline and superhuman strength here. On this page I will only explain the role of strength and define it.
At least but not last I'll say that strength is a ability.

To be strong is to have ability. In life, in the gym, and in relationships. The ability to overcome the physical, emotional, or subjective obstacles that hinder our progress as human beings. That is strength.

The author of this wonderful definition of Strength is Chip Conrad. Visit his hub for modern physical culture here.

Finally we solved the definition for strength, what now. Now we can enter the world of strangely compelling questions. Could a tiger beat up a big grizzly bear? Who has stronger legs Roberto Carlos or Jan Ulrich (Lance Armstrong doping evidence)? Could you measure the strength in Usain Bold's legs?

We could extend the categories of strength in several ways and in several types. Before we do so I just want to make things clear. We can say for weight lifters that they have great lifting strength, for soccer player great kicking strength (I don't prefer to be hit), for runners great running strength, for climbers great hand and finger strength and so on.

Kinds of strength

• static strength
• explosive strength
• dynamic strength
• strength endurance
• strength speed
• reactive strength
• eccentric strength
• isometric strength
• concentric strength

Static strength is used when you try to move an immovable object (try to push against a wall), or carry a heavy object. There is no movement of the object, the muscles do not change length which is called isometric contraction.

Explosive strength is used when exerting a force in a short, fast burst. This is similar to power. Take as an example throwing a ball or long jump.

Dynamic strength is used when repeatedly applying force, over a long period of time. Similar to muscular endurance (it's similar but not the same). Take as an example when performing reps when doing push ups or pull ups, or some other exercise that require reps.

Strength endurance is used when you resist a force over time or you make repeated muscle contractions against a force. Strength endurance is a measure of the ability of a muscle or muscle group to work continuously. It has a meaning similar to muscle endurance, but with strength endurance there is a greater emphasis on the amount of the force which can be resisted.

Strength speed is used when you do speed training where there is relatively more contribution from force rather than acceleration. For example when you exercise push ups, try to get up as fast as possible using maximal force rather then acceleration.

Reactive strength is used in transition from a eccentric action following a rapid concentric action. For example, jump from a 30 inch chair on the ground and swiftly rise up to execute a powerful jump. If you lack to convert the eccentric power into reactive strength you won't get high.

Eccentric and concentric strength, you can conclude what both mean from the reactive strength explanation above.

With this we finished a chapter about strength. Hope you learned someting about strength.

Welcome to pure strength

I welcome you warmly to my site where I will present you my master work. Under master work I mean a special adopted and modified strength book. Why?

Let me tell you about myself. I'm 23 years old, I live in Missouri and I'm a big gym fanatic. Of course I don't go to gym to be big and bulk, I just focus on strength. Besides, you don't need to worry about getting big because it's extremely difficult. You need to have a proper diet, meat, proteins and other things you maybe can't afford (like me), but to be honest I don't want to! Maybe you can i don't know, depends what you want and what not.


I want to show the world that not only muscle means power. Of course muscle means a LOT, but even the big dudes won't be able to use even 30% of his maximal power in his muscles. I will take as example me. I visited the gym regularly 2 years ago. After a big break I decided to go to gym again. It was a big disadvantage when I saw that all my strength was gone during that period of time. So I started all over again, of course the muscle memory takes a important place in our lives. With the power of muscle memory I was able to lift the same amount of weight like I did 2 years ago in a short period of time.

After a while I was not satisfied with my current state of strength I developed. My gains where poor, sometimes they drop and sometimes they rose, depends in what mood you are.

So I talked to my dad. He is a retired sports teacher and known for his legendary power in the hands and legs. After a long lasting discussion he gave me 2 books that he got as a gift for his winning matches in various disciplines such as arm wrestling, boxing and lifting weights. The books and the experience dad gave me turned the tables. Now I have the knowledge and might in my hand to use 90% of my muscle capability. That's because I want to share with you this amazing experience and show you how to increase your strength immediately.

You may want to visit my how to increase strength page to download the E-book free and continue reading my story and be sure to read my book.